Divide by 206
by Hedgi
Summary: 4000 years is a long time until you divide by 206. No life time is the same. Sometimes he finds her. Sometimes she finds him. Sometimes they find each other. They don't always even die together, even that small comfort denied them. The only constant is that they die, and that they live. A few Lives and deaths of the Hawks inspired by the two-parter.


Divide by 206

* * *

In life 17, Khufu finds Shayera, though they have not had those names in too long. The world makes sense in a blink of an eye, the fall of a feather, her hatred of the cold but love of the mountain where she remembers now she has not always lived. They flee in the night, ready this time. They are certain this time, they will be victorious. They will live, and see the homes they have had before this.  
They are 19 when they challenge Savage for their own fates.  
They are 19 when they realize they had not lived long enough.

~~  
In life 41, Shayera finds Khufu, and they are not Prince and Priestess. They have not been in nearly a century. So often, he is the one who reminds her, but this time, her wings are already spread, the soaring wings, broad and brindled. He listens, eager and afraid, and remembers. Together they go, they hunt out the bits of their past to cling to, a small sea and so many mountains away from where they remember they once lived. Nothing there was quite this green, or damp. It makes feathers itch, but it is worth it.  
They are 21 when Savage finds them on their little island and massacres their new people.  
They are 21 when they die, her wings steady and sure and stained now with blood.

~~

In Life 52, there is a weariness. It is with desperation that Khufu grabs her up, and leaves, leaving her village to suspect a monster from the sky, calling him Storm Wing, calling him Dragon, calling him Harpy. Perhaps, he tells her, willing her to listen, if Savage thinks her dead, and him as well, he will not come. They never stop running in this lifetime, never staying still for fear of being noticed, being traced. She has longed for adventure, she has it now. It will not be her destiny to die in childbirth.  
They are 17 when they linger too long in one spot.  
They are 17 when their luck runs out.

~~  
In life 72, there is no one who remembers their names, though they are closer this life than they ever have been before, southward some, born in the thin shade of Acacia trees. This time, he finds her, and she does not want to believe the words he is offering. Her father believes in the offer of land and cattle. She comes to believe his kindness, and then his wings. When men attack their home, she finds her own strength, and she flies higher than the giraffes reach.  
They are 26 in this life when another bandit comes, alone but with more strength than a pack.  
They are 26 when Khufu falls shielding her, and her strength is not enough

~~  
In life 98 there are too many memories to contain, flitting back over shared thin, weak caco, happy memories spoiled by blood. They are so far from the home they knew, this time. Across an ocean, but the people here Know some things, they Know of Egypt, though that seems impossible, so far ago, so long removed. There are different Gods, here. One night, the sun sets but the light does not fade. They take it as a miracle. To others, it may have been.  
They are the oldest they have been in many decades, still breathing, wings still beating.  
When the next dusk comes, so does he.  
They are 30 when Shayera stands over a cradle, knife in hand, a mother's rage at her heart.  
They are 30 when the child is the first to die, but not the last.

~~  
In life 150, Shayera searches the world as best she can for the man who stands in her dreams. Her mama calls her foolish. She does not care. Her eyes never leave the sky, until her feet do, and then she searches the ground until she finds him, hands rough from working the land, callused and dirty and rough in ways the Prince he was would never be. She knows that loves him anyway. He cannot speak the language she does, but calls her a word she thinks means Angel. Their smiles are clumsy.  
They are 20 when Savage plunges a knife through his throat  
They are 20 when she realizes she had not yet learned his new name as her own heart stops.  
~~

In life 166,Khufu finds her and runs the other way. It burns him to do so, to leave her wingless, and he calls himself coward and hopes that it may be enough, that he might be prize enough. He cannot find her if she never emerges, if she never soars. He hopes, it will work. Nothing else has. He shrills battle cries with a flock of crows from thousands of miles from the girl he loves.  
They are 25 when he realizes that she had already done the same.  
They are 25 when they die without ever holding each other.

~~  
In life 184,they call him, Devil. They call her, Witch. They have found themselves before they have found each other, and glimpse each other from opposite sides of a court room. She looks at him, and recognizes. He looks at her and knows. They spread their wings before all and flee, no longer caring about those who cry Heretic. If there is a God, He has explaining to do for all that has happened. They shed the names Mary and Michael and take back the names they remember, flying by moonlight, trying to escape the world they were born to this time.  
They are 18 when they succeeded in finding escape.  
They are 18 when the escape is a death that doesn't last.

~~  
In life 193, they again meet with bars between them, Khufu on display, a sideshow attraction to gape at, Shayera passing by, feeling phantom feathers on her back. She whispers to him until the guard barks a warning. She returns that night, avoiding puddles of muck, with drugged ale for the guard, and lockpick tools. She never was a Proper Lady. It is Khufu who tells the story of their past, but she is the one who finds their helmets, on display in some manor house with now broken glass windows.  
They are 21 when they learn that Manor belongs to a member of government, an advisor.  
They are 21 when they bleed out on Vandal Savages' Carpet  
~~

In life 200, Shayera has more important things on her mind than love, things like her rights, like the lives of her Union sisters, things like earning money to send back home to her family in Calabria. But he is persistent, asking her to dance in clumsy English, and once they go to watch the Wright brothers fly. "I want to soar," he says, or she thinks he says. Her English is no better, but he speaks no Italian, and she speaks no Yiddish. "So do I," she says, pointing.  
And then comes the fire, and they are on the ninth floor and the ladders do not reach. The only way out is to fall, a better death than burning. They fall. They fly.  
Above the smoke, and then back in, one thought only, the memories and past lives forgotten in the heat to save the lives of the others, beating against locked doors.  
They are 16 when Savage is waiting in the Greene Street Stairwell.  
They are 16 when their deaths are counted in the 146, but it was not the fire that killed them.  
~~

In life 206, neither of them knows who found who, or which remembered what. It has always been, born to mothers who share a recovery room and a street, tumbling from pine trees and wings spreading out. Shay and Khuf are the nick names, the baby talk code that never drops, and the mothers laugh at the stories they clearly whisper, making up with action figures and Barbie dolls. They tell their dreams, their own lives, and none of it seems real. They are only stories, like the movies they watch on cassette tapes.  
They are 5 when a man slips into an attic playroom.  
They are 5 when the stories become real, beginning, middle, end.  
~~

In life 207, they live.  
They do not know for how long.  
4000 years is a long time until you divide by 206.


End file.
